iMovie for iOS allows you to add titles to your projects based upon a theme you choose; covering most common styles and requirements. This tutorial takes you through the available options.

Step 1 of 10:

Open one of your iMovie projects or create one from scratch for the purposes of this tutorial. Locate the clip you'd like to add a title to, and tap on it to select it. This highlights the clip with thick yellow handles and reveals a toolbar at the bottom. The available commands on the right depend on wether 'Video' or 'Audio' is selected on the left. Tap on the former if it wasn't already selected.

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Open one of your iMovie projects or create one from scratch for the purposes of this tutorial. Locate the clip you'd like to add a title to, and tap on it to select it. This highlights the clip with thick yellow handles and reveals a toolbar at the bottom. The available commands on the right depend on wether 'Video' or 'Audio' is selected on the left. Tap on the former if it wasn't already selected.

Step 2 of 10:

Tap on 'Title' on the right to replace this toolbar with another bearing specific options for the task at hand. You can choose on the left whether you wish to work with an Opening, Middle or Closing title. Select any and a placeholder text will appear on the screen, along with any animated background graphic. This graphic is dependant on the theme you chose when you created your project, which also affects the look of one of the transitions available to you.

Step 3 of 10:

You're not bound by the theme you selected when you first created your project. In fact you can change it at any time by tapping on the cog wheel icon, lower right of the interface. From there, you will gain access to all eight available themes. Select one more to your liking. Since you already selected a title, tapping on a new theme will automatically replace its style with the new one, making it easy for you to make sure your new choice is the best one.

Step 4 of 10:

It's time to change the placeholder text to something a little more meaningful. Tap on 'title text here' to bring up the keyboard, but don't start typing just yet. If you do, you'll be adding to the placeholder text, not replacing it. Top left of the text field is an 'x'. Tap on it first to remove any existing text, and you'll then be free to replace it with whatever you wish.

Step 5 of 10:

Just like your project's overall theme, you can change the type of title, from opening, middle and closing, at any time. Select the clip again if you need to, then choose the Title option from the toolbar. Notice that as you change the title's type, the text you imputed is preserved. However, if you happen to tap on 'none', that information is wiped from iMovie memory and you'll have to type it in again.

Step 6 of 10:

Three types of titles may feel a little limiting, especially when you consider that you can't mix and match iMovie's themes: when you change it, every single title is altered to match the new look. But thankfully, iMovie 2 comes with a series of additional text options which are independent of those themes so you could add different ones throughout your edit if you chose to. You can find them by tapping on the icon shaped like a T, to the left of the cog wheel icon.

Step 7 of 10:

Tapping on that icon reveals a popup window bearing nine titles. The first one is your currently selected theme. Most of the others offer some kind of text animation. You cannot customise that animation in any way - you can merely select it, but at least it offers you a handful of varied choices. Selecting one replaces the style instantly but preserves the text information. Once you've done this, you can choose whether to have your text in the centre of lower left of the screen.

Step 8 of 10:

There's a big limit to iOS titles. Unlike its Mac counterpart, your titles can't span multiple clips, and you can't alter their duration: the title is linked to the chosen clip, no matter how long it is. This is obviously not an ideal situation for most of your needs. You wouldn't, for instance, need a title that's over 20 seconds long. Thankfully, there's a way around this - you still can't make it span multiple clips, but you can specify exactly over which part of the clip the title will appear.

Step 9 of 10:

The process involves splitting the clip into various parts. You can do this in multiple ways. The most obvious is through the bottom toolbar. Move the clips until the playhead is over the place you want to cut your clip. Tap on that clip to select it, then choose Video from the toolbar and then 'Split'. Another option is to swipe down with your finger over the playhead. This gesture cuts the clip. Swiping up instead is interesting: not only will it cut the clip in two, but it will insert a freeze frame in between those two parts.

Step 10 of 10:

Cut your clip in as many parts as you require, then, select the appropriate piece and add a title to it following steps 2 to 7 once more. You can preview the title and it's animation by dragging the clip left and right over the playhead. You can also swipe instead of drag to preview the title's animation speeded up, but if you want to see how it feels in real time, then your only option is to tap on the play button, top left of the timeline section.

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